a man on his back,” gasped Jane. She was tired and out of breath and had lost a shoe.
“A man?” said Denniston: and then, “By God, sir, Jane’s right. Look, look there! Against the sky . . . to your left.”
“We can’t overtake him,” said Dimble.
“Hi! Stop! Come back! Friends—amis—amici,” bawled Denniston.
Dimble was not able to shout for the moment. He was an old man, who had been tired before they set out, and now his heart and lungs were doing things to him of which his doctor had told him the meaning some years ago. He was not frightened, but he could not shout with a great voice (least of all in the Old Solar language) until he had breathed. And while he stood trying to fill his lungs all the others suddenly cried “Look” yet again: for high among the stars, looking unnaturally large and many legged, the shape of the horse appeared as it leaped a hedge some twenty yards away, and on its back, with some streaming garment blown far out behind him in the wind, the great figure of a man. It seemed to Jane that he was looking back over his shoulder as though he mocked. Then came a splash and thud as the horse alighted on the far side; and then nothing but wind and starlight again.
IV
“You are in danger,” said Frost, when he had finished locking the door of Mark’s cell, “but you are also within reach of a great opportunity.”
“I gather,” said Mark, “I am at the Institute after all and not in a police station.”
“Yes. That makes no difference to the danger. The Institute will soon have official powers of liquidation. It has anticipated them. Hingest and Carstairs have both been liquidated. Such actions are demanded of us.”
“If you are going to kill me,” said Mark, “why all this farce of a murder charge?”
“Before going on,” said Frost, “I must ask you to be strictly objective. Resentment and fear are both chemical phenomena. Our reactions to one another are chemical phenomena. Social relations are chemical relations. You must observe these feelings in yourself in an objective manner. Do not let them distract your attention from the facts.”
“I see,” said Mark. He was acting while he said it—trying to sound at once faintly hopeful and slightly sullen, ready to be worked upon. But within, his new insight into Belbury kept him resolved not to believe one word the other said, not to accept (though he might feign acceptance) any offer he made. He felt that he must at all costs hold on to the knowledge that these men were unalterable enemies: for already he felt the old tug towards yielding, towards semi-credulity, inside him.
“The murder charge against you and the alternations in your treatment have been part of a planned programme with a well-defined end in view,” said Frost. “It is a discipline through which everyone is passed before admission to the Circle.”
Again Mark felt a spasm of retrospective terror. Only a few days ago he would have swallowed any hook with that bait on it; and nothing but the imminence of death could have made the hook so obvious and the bait so insipid as it now was. At least, so comparatively insipid. For even now . . .
“I don’t quite see the purpose of it,” he said aloud.
“It is, again, to promote objectivity. A circle bound together by subjective feelings of mutual confidence and liking would be useless. Those, as I have said, are chemical phenomena. They could all, in principle, be produced by injections. You have been made to pass through a number of conflicting feelings about the Deputy Director and others in order that your future association with us may not be based on feelings at all. In so far as there must be social relations between members of the circle it is, perhaps, better that they should be feelings of dislike. There is less risk of their being confused with the real nexus.”
“My future association?” said Studdock, acting a tremulous eagerness. But it was perilously easy for him to act it. The reality might reawake at any moment.
“Yes,” said Frost. “You have been selected as a possible candidate for admission. If you do not gain admission, or if you reject it, it will be necessary to destroy you. I am not, of course, attempting to work on your fears. They only confuse the issue. The process would be quite painless, and your present reactions to it are inevitable physical events.”
“It—it seems rather a formidable decision,” said Mark.
“That is merely a proposition about the state of your own body at the moment. If you please, I will go on to give you the necessary information. I must begin by telling you that neither the Deputy Director, nor I, are responsible for shaping the policy of the Institute.”
“The Head?” said Mark.
“No. Filostrato and Wilkins are quite deceived about the Head. They have, indeed, carried out a remarkable experiment by preserving it from decay. But Alcasan’s mind is not the mind we are in contact with when the Head speaks.”
“Do you mean Alcasan is really . . . dead?” asked Mark. His surprise at Frost’s last statement needed no acting.
“In the present state of our knowledge,” said Frost, “there is no answer to that question. Probably it has no meaning. But the cortex and vocal organs in Alcasan’s head are used by a different mind. And now, please, attend very carefully. You have probably not heard of macrobes.”
“Microbes?” said Mark in bewilderment. “But of course——”
“I did not say microbes, I said macrobes. The formation of the word explains itself. Below the level of animal life we have long known that there are microscopic organisms. Their actual results on human life, in respect of health and disease, have, of course, made up a large part of history: the secret cause was not known till we invented the microscope.”
“Go on,” said Mark. Ravenous curiosity was moving like a sort of ground-swell beneath his conscious determination to stand on guard.
“I have now to inform you that there are similar organisms above the level of animal life. When I say “above” I am not speaking biologically. The structure of the macrobe, so far as we know it, is of extreme simplicity. When I say that it is above the animal level, I mean that it is more permanent, disposes of more energy, and has greater intelligence.”
“More intelligent than the highest anthropoids?” said Mark. “It must be pretty nearly human, then.”
“You have misunderstood me. When I said it transcended the animals, I was, of course, including the most efficient animal, Man. The macrobe is more intelligent than Man.”
“But how is it in that case that we have had no communication with them?”
“It is not certain that we have not. But in primitive times it was spasmodic, and was opposed by numerous prejudices. Moreover the intellectual development of man had not reached the level at which intercourse with our species could offer any attractions to a macrobe. But though there has been little intercourse, there has been profound influence. Their effect on human history has been far greater than that of the microbes, though, of course, equally unrecognised. In the light of what we now know all history will have to be rewritten. The real causes of all the principal events are quite unknown to the historians; that, indeed, is why history has not yet succeeded in becoming a science.”
“I
